Anchored in the Fluorescent Hum

They talk amongst themselves, and when a touch of mood crosses their faces, their whole bodies wake up like bumblebees, restless, reactive, always shifting. They were all sipping from clear plastic cups, with bags by their feet. The staff who knew each other discussed the new Starbucks menu. The others said oi, which softened the room. But not her, behind her thin‑rimmed glasses. I knew her, but not really; stillness holds her together. She is the kind of person whose warmth stays exactly where it is, steady and unmoving, as distant as the wall and as near as the humming fluorescent lights. I notice her the way I notice the unchanged grain of the carpet, the quiet things that stay where they are. She is the only one anchored in her black formal wear, tapping her index finger, not her thumb, against the screen of her phone.

She was alert behind the glare of her glasses. The fluorescent light blinked, and one square of the ceiling hung slightly open. Even the plant on the higher path of the room tilted toward the chairs, as if listening. I stood up to leave; I did not feel her move, but somehow she appeared. She was taller than me, and her rounded cheeks protruded softly.

There was light but shadows gathered next to me. My head felt heavy, and the sign on the door warped into something unreadable. I turned toward the darker corner where a voice rose beside me, words I could not catch. As I blinked, I caught the phrase coffee machine and latched onto it as her face came into view. It was her. The coffee machine, even though I did not use it, was the one thing I knew she would find if she went into the kitchen, and if it was not there she would find another way to make that coffee. I knew where the kitchen was, at least. I latched onto something I could complete.

The moment her back turned and I saw the lace along her spine, I knew this was my first day in the court waiting room. I lifted the anxious weight of the morning to ask questions, now that I knew the way, yet the confusion I showed felt like a knot in my head and seemed to hold space beside me where her aura could merge with mine. I hoped the words I held onto were the ones that could help her find her path, but as my mouth moved, hers moved with mine, and when the door closed behind her I wondered if I had come across dismissive.

The tension in my arms and the voices drilling through my hair frayed into the background, as if I had stepped somewhere safer. I breathed out heat and drew in air that cleared my nose and opened my ears with a quiet pop. Each locker in the room held its own secrets, but in me there were no more locks to open. The room that once felt to both of us like a stain that would not fade, a moon we could not move, steadied. I was unlocked by her because she showed me it was also her first day by being uncertain about where to go, and by me she was unlocked, until uncertainty returns and we see again the gap in the ceiling, the plant hanging down, and the fluorescent light blinking.

Then the ceiling closed in my head, and the darkened corner brightened under the fluorescent hum. The malnourished thing was not the plant reaching down or the chairs drifting further along the room. It was the way the back row had turned black, as if the warmth had cooled and we were being sent off again to another trial. The familiar faces peeled away without me, and I felt myself drifting toward the back, learning again how to stand in the presence of something different. I was off centre for a while, until I saw her back. The puzzle piece of the day slotted into my mind. She was here to fulfil something. If she was not gone, she was here to fulfil something I did not yet know.

I went to the receptionist who had been kind on the first day, but under the weight of her work I was a wall she could not see. She typed without looking up, and even when I moved where she moved, I was not seen. I felt rude for lingering, so I sat down, and only then was my name called, not by her. I went down to the charred chairs, through the chocolate doors, and into another room with purple seats. We funnelled into the courtroom, and beside me stood someone like a tall tree. She shook slightly when I did not hear her, and in that small tremor I understood she was warming me with something we both agreed on: the AC was on, and it was freezing before we were even seated.

My presence was not just for myself. If I existed in this moment, anxious or free, I could stand in for someone else’s grounding, even if it meant standing in the open earth and watching it peel back the green grass still clinging to the soil. I was needed, even when my mind refused to believe I was part of the whole. Even when I felt I repelled like the negative side of a magnetic ball, I was still of gravity, and those like me gravitated toward me, even after years without a friend. I remain as the grains embedded in the carpet.

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